


I really need a girl like an open book.

by Arya_Greenleaf



Series: Love in an Elevator [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Clothed Sex, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Rough Kissing, Semi-Public Sex, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2015-10-24
Packaged: 2018-04-27 09:59:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5043964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arya_Greenleaf/pseuds/Arya_Greenleaf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve finds a connection with Natasha that he didn't immediately expect. Who knew that pouring your problems into a physical outlet other than beating the hell out of a hanging bag could work? Whether or not it's a good thing for either of them is completely in the air.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I really need a girl like an open book.

**Author's Note:**

> The girl is not the open book.  
> Mostly.

Somehow, it always seemed that their missions wound up in or over water. Steve was beginning to think Natasha was planning it somehow, aside from the murky politics that covered the kind of operations they undertook in typically international waters. She took special pleasure watching the looks on whatever other agents’ faces who happened to be assigned to the mission as well when Steve jumped out of the quinjet, freefalling toward the waves.

It wasn’t that he was careless or reckless… but it was entirely that he was careless and reckless. Steve found that a parachute slowed him down. Taking the time to put it on ate valuable seconds at drop points. Heck, the whole point of a chute was to slow a descent to some extent. Opening a chute, even under the cover of darkness, drew too much attention. The reason he was on these missions was to take out the immediate threat, the bigger threats, to clear a path for Natasha or Rumlow and STRIKE.

Steve didn’t need safety measures.

Steve _was_ the safety measure.

And it suited him fine.

He wasn’t really using his body. It was a husk he was existing in.

He may as well put it to work for someone else’s benefit.

Natasha understood that. She didn’t like it any more than the head shrinker Fury was making him spend four hours a week with when he was home, but she understood.

She understood intimately.

Because she knew the feeling.

She knew what it was like to just exist, to not really live. To be in that limbo where the only think that really mattered was the mission, to have nothing else to wake up for, no other direction or directive.

It started with Natasha inviting herself over to Steve’s apartment on evening.

He’d been in SHIELD’s gym, wailing on a hanging bag. He didn’t know what they made the things out of, but they were a hell of a lot stronger than the ones back at the boxing gym in Brooklyn. He didn’t spend nearly as much time sweeping up sand, but he did spend plenty of time wrapping his knuckles. The harder he hit, the more time he spent hitting, the more the world fell away and the less it mattered that he’d even taken care of his hands before he started.

His wraps refused to come clean anymore. They were a dingy, brownish mess. He could get new ones, there was always a good stockpile of equipment readily available, but he didn’t want to. It made him feel good to do a little damage to himself. To be reminded that damage _could_ actually be done.

It wasn’t much, but leaving the gym with bloodied knuckles and bruised shins made him feel a little less disconnected.

The vaguely frightened looks that the other agents regarded him with when he walked away from the bag with his shirt sticking to his body and his hair damp made his skin buzz.

Let them be afraid. Let them be nervous. Let them avoid him, not want to get close.

Steve didn’t want to be close to anyone. Didn’t want to get to know anyone. What was the point when you were just a husk? When the people you loved were long dead or dying? When _you_ died for nothing because your team won the War but lost the bits of humanity that you were actually fighting for?

If he got close then he would care and caring only got people hurt.

So Natasha showed up with a bottle of good whiskey and a stack of files. He would have pegged her for a vodka drinker but he also supposed that making assumptions about Natasha was a stupid thing to do. Maybe she just figured he’d like it.

“Left over takeout and beer.” She stood in front of his fridge with a skeptical look. “Barton’s partial to pizza and coffee. But at least that tells me one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“No matter what half of the century you come from, men are all the same.”

Steve barked out a laugh, harsh and unfeeling. He’d called out that the door was open when she’d knocked. He was sitting in the living room with his hands in a salad bowl filled with ice water. He didn’t necessarily have to take care of it, even untreated the torn up skin on this knuckles would probably be little more than some inflammation by morning. The delicious ache in his shins was already beginning to dull. The next best thing was the burn of the ice against his shredded skin and the beginnings of numbness in the tips of his fingers. She’d given him a look, one of those looks that reminded him of Peggy—impressed and exasperated all at once—and plunked the bottle down on the table.

“Tash, we were on that goddamned hellicarrier for like a month. I just chucked everything.”

“Mhm.” She ordered Italian, something dense and filling that he barely tasted and felt like a brick in his belly. When she came into the living room from running down to the lobby to meet the delivery guy she had a cryptic smile on. “Who’s the cute blonde?”

Steve raised his brows and lifted a cold, dripping hand out to Natasha when she put her bag down. “Hi, Steve Rogers, nice to meet you.”

She snorted in amusement and rustled up utensils from the kitchen. “I meant your neighbor.”

“Kate.”

“Hm. What’s her story?”

“How should I know?”

“She was asking about you.”

Steve’s heart fluttered a little. He liked Kate. She was interesting, or at least he liked to think she would be if he got to know her.

Steve drank most of the bottle. Not as if he could feel the buzz it might offer otherwise, but he liked the taste and the burn. For a petite woman, Natasha did pretty well keeping up. They sat on the couch together when they were done; Steve staring unseeingly at the television screen, the evening news a mess of nothing and everything that washed over him and made his head spin unpleasantly. Natasha had his hand in hers. She was picking at the bits of greyish, dead skin clinging to the backs of his hands absentmindedly the same way he’d seen her picking at her own after a round of bare-fisted wailing on a hanging bag or a dummy. He couldn’t help the flutter of his lashes when she liberated a twisted piece of unfeeling flesh, the severed attachment offering the slightest sting. He looked down at her as she rubbed at his fingers almost tenderly, her thumbs pressing up into his palm so hard it made a shock race up into his elbow, the opposite of smacking his funny bone.

“Why’re you here?”

“’Cause you’re an open book, Rogers.” Her lips against his fingertips felt like a punch to the gut.

They fucked there on the couch with their clothes mostly on. Natasha ditched her pants and her shoes. Steve fumbled with his belt and zipper, nearly instantly hard with his heart hammering wildly in his chest. She smirked when he asked her to wait, her hand wrapped tightly around his cock, for him to get a rubber from the bedroom. She wasn’t concerned but she’d wait if it was important to him.

He trusted her. Or at least it felt like something akin to trust—as much as you could with someone who had more secrets than Pandora’s Box and that was just fine with him.

When they were done he felt warm and overwhelmed and chafed completely raw somewhere inside where he couldn’t reach but evidently Natasha could. She clung to them when they were done, her fingers twined up in his hair, muttering that he should get it trimmed, make a change. He was sure she was clinging for him, not for her. He wrapped his arms around her and buried his face against the crook of her neck, breathing in the smell of her and soaking up her warmth, still half hard and inside but too wrecked to do anything about it or care enough to want to.

The next time he saw her he’d chopped off a good length, gotten it trimmed into something resembling what people his age wore. Natasha gave him a knowing look and a nod of approval when they passed in the hall. He smiled inwardly and squared his shoulders as he opened the door to Hill’s office to be briefed.

It was different with Natasha.

She understood as much about him as he didn’t understand about her. She was distant and immediate at the same time. She knew how to touch him without asking, she let him know how she wanted to be touched. She let him do and say what he needed, took what she wanted but didn’t say much. It was a silent mutual arrangement.

It was better than black book services, girls and boys who were happy to go to dinner and then back to a hotel until they got some inkling that he might be more than he was claiming and destroyed that little bit of unsullied content he’d managed to grab. It was better than date after failed date, wondering constantly when the other shoe was going to drop and retreating further and further into himself.

Natasha understood his world. Knew where he came from, too, even if she didn’t understand that part of it fully.

He never had to pretend he was something he wasn’t when he was around her.

Once in a while at Steve’s place became post-mission unwinding in hotel rooms and supply closets. It turned into Natasha offering to spar with him, teaching him how to extricate himself from some of her more lethal chokes and holds. Sparring became fucking in the showers or the cramped confines of Natasha’s sleek _Stingray_ with his legs jammed up and a gear stuck in his back.

Sometimes _fucking_ didn’t feel like the right word for what they did.

But they weren’t exactly _making love_ either—Steve valued what he was fairly confident was Natasha’s friendship and he valued her as a teammate but he didn’t _love_ her.

_Sex_ didn’t feel right either, it was too clinical sounding, like he wasn’t the one directly participating in the act.

Steve supposed he could call it _intimacy_. There was something definitely intimate about the intuitive way he and Natasha had learned to move around and in and over and under each other. There was something intimate about expressing himself physically when he couldn’t express it in words.

It had to be some kind of intimacy if it could leave him shaking and crying like an idiot with his bare ass against the overheated leather seat of a car when most things made him feel next to nothing at all.

***

The mission had gone south pretty quickly.

They were supposed to be able to get in and get out with little trouble. Steve would clear a safe path for the small STRIKE team that was coming with them—just Rumlow and Rollins. They’d make a lot of noise and knock a lot of heads out in the front of the warehouse while Natasha snuck in somewhere around back. She’d capture the man in charge and get whatever data she could off of their main computer server about the human experiments that were going on there. If they were lucky, they might even make it out with live subjects—banking on the fact that these people hadn’t submitted to the experiments willingly.

Steve had been overwhelmed right out of the gate. There were two of them, both giving him a run for his money in every department that mattered when you were engaged in up-close, hand-to-hand combat.

They were fast and strong and resilient.

Rumlow and Rollins found themselves beat back fairly quickly.

Steve couldn’t help but feel a twinge of outrage. It was like they hadn’t tried at all—them with their automatic weapons and explosives and tactical armor while he was walloping guys in the face with a big metal Frisbee and swinging out his fists and feet as hard and fast as he could.

The warehouse had turned out to be a fairly sophisticated lab facility, not just the holding pen and storage that they’d suspected.

Steve’s eyes grew wide when the woman he was fighting began to glow. He’d met enough people with special abilities to know that glowing people were not a good thing when they were not on your side.

“Widow! Somethings seriously wrong!” He shouted breathlessly as the woman battered his shield with her fist and twisted her body to fit her foot in the tight space between his hip and his arm at the edge. Pain shot though his gut and he stumbled.

Natasha’s voice crackled in his earpiece. “Little occupied, Cap!” He could hear the faint sounds of a scuffle across the open channel, something like shelving being pushed over and its contents spilling onto the floor.

“They’re fuckin’ glowing! And I can’t find R&R!”

“Fuck!”

“Natasha, what’s happening?”

“Big man is down. He shot ‘imself. But not before he set the place to blow—there’s no way this is going to happen without everyone in at least the tristate area knowing about it.”

“Get out of there!”

“I still have a mission to finish, Steve!”

“Fuck!” Steve tripped over a bundle of thick cables on the floor and rolled. The glowing woman looked like she was going to break apart, deep fissures burning around the creases of her features and joints, the light radiating from her body intensified. She looked down at her hands, horrified, and then back at him. She doubled over, clearly in pain and stumbled as she retreated.

The man who had disappeared with Rumlow and Rollins reappeared as Steve got to his feet, not aglow as well. He wasted no time in engaging Steve once again, hooking his fingers into the collar of Steve’s suit and swinging him around like a ragdoll.

He tried to spot the wall like a dancer, the way the girls on the tour taught him, tried to keep an eye on where the woman was stumbling off too even as the man attacking him was grabbing at the longer hair on top of his head and yanking his head back with enough force to snap a less resilient person’s neck.

“Tahh—Tash! Tash, I lost one!” He grunted and reached back, groping and grasping for purchase, his stomach flipping over at the agonized scream from his attacker and the sharp snap and gooey wetness under his thumb.

“We’ve got a few minutes. Steve—I can see you on surveillance, those aren’t guards those are the test subjects!”

“Tash, it’s him or me—where the _fuck_ is STRIKE?”

He pushed off the ground, eyes watering as his hair came out at the roots, his skin tearing, and flipped himself over to effectively put his attacker into a hold with his legs. He couldn’t help the little thrill of pride that ran through him at pulling off a maneuver he’d only ever tried in training and never gone all the way with. The man collapsed to his knees under Steve’s weight, gasping for breath and scrabbling at Steve’s pant legs and the laces on his boots.

He began to feel heat through sturdy Kevlar weave of his suit and suddenly Natasha was in his ear again, yelling at him to take the guy out before it was too late.

“Widow, if he’s a civilian—“ He squeezed harder with his legs, fighting to keep the man pinned.

“He’s going to _explode_ , Steve. Like a fucking bomb. You need to stop it before he does—“

Steve swallowed down the bile that raced up the back of his throat at the sickening pop and crunch of vertebrae under his hands as he twisted.

“Natasha—“

“Steve you did the right thing.”

“We need to find that woman and get out of here. We need to find Rumlow and Rollins.” His hands shook. His scalp tingled, blood cooling and matting his hair. His voice was dead. He moved on autopilot toward the hall the woman disappeared down. “Can you still see me?”

“Yeah.”

“We still got time?”

“Two minutes.”

“Get what you came for and get out.”

“Steve don’t be an idiot.”

“Captain’s orders.”

“Bullshit. I’ve got the data. I’m coming to you.”

***

It was evening when Natasha stood next to him silently in front of Fury’s desk.

She was already out of her suit, practically tore it off when they reached the Triskelion and he helped her toward the women’s locker rooms with a hand at her elbow.

They’d found the woman. She’d overheated and exploded right in front of them.

Then the building started to go, a series of charges first going off in the laboratory area and branching outward.

The smell of burning flesh and smoke clung to them and their tattered gear.

The ends of Natasha’s hair were singed. Steve hadn’t looked in the mirror yet but he felt almost certain he was at least a half an eyebrow short to go along with the throbbing patch on the top of his head.

They’d thrown on the nondescript SHIELD-issued training clothes and reported for debrief.

They’d been assured that Rumlow and Rollins had made it safely back in the vehicle they’d taken to their location. They’d been told that the two of them had been searching the facility and taken cover when they heard the explosion. They’d not been offered a reason for their lack of response over comms. Or why they hadn’t checked to see if Steve or Natasha needed help.

Natasha had called for extraction when they found their way out into the waning daylight.

Barton arrived in record time, silent and furious behind the wheel.

“You two fucked up. Big time.” Fury’s expression was neutral as he listened to their account of the mission. “I’m taking you off the case. Clearly this is going to require a different kind of team.”

“Sir, I—“ Fury put a hand up to silence him.

“I’m not blamin’ the whole thing on you. STRIKE’s got a hell of a lot to answer for, they should have never left the location without confirming your status. But you were both sloppy and you’re both lucky you’re still alive.” He looked at Steve, daring him to blink first. Steve relented. “Both of you, go get cleaned up. Get checked out in medical. Get cooled off. We can deal with the fall-out, messy as it is. I’m more worried about my people than what appears to amount to a goddamned freak accident. If the experimental data Romanov got is legit, then there was no way you two had any other choice.” He pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers and drew in a deep breath then slid a finger under the strap of his patch. It was a rare display of discomfort, something that felt strategic. But it did bring Fury onto their level effectively. “Go take care of yourselves.”

Romanov nodded and started to turn. Steve was rooted to the spot, angry at the entire situation, pissed as hell that he felt like he’d been called out onto the carpet for something he’d had little control over—something he should have had a team backing him on.

Natasha put a gentle hand on his elbow, making him snap back into himself. He sucked in a breath and tried to blink himself back to reality, “Yes’ir.”

They made their way silently down the hall, the industrial carpet dampening the sounds of their boots against the floor. Agents Steve knew by face but not by name gave them wide birth, probably wary of their persistent odor and the bloody, sooty residue stubbornly clinging to their faces and arms. Steve was sure he looked like hell, his own blood crusted in his hair.

He needed a shower and a stiff drink. Not that the drink would help, but he could pretend.

He focused on the singed ends of Natasha’s hair, swaying against her shoulders as she walked in front of him. A familiar voice coming from the elevator bank gave him pause.

“Rumlow!”

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ.” He sounded incredulous, edging on happy surprise.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” Natasha stepped to the side, observant.

“Y’didn’t respond over comms. Couldn’t find either of ya. We thought you were dead ‘r captured. Two of us against super-powered science projects?” He raised a brow and looked pointedly at Steve before he continued. “We needed t’regroup, get back-up.”

“Two of _us_ against unstable enhanced test subjects and we did just fine.”

“Just fine? Really?”

Steve lunged, Rumlow dodged back. Natasha hooked her fingers fast into Steve’s belt and he froze. He clenched his jaw so tight he thought his teeth might crack. His hands clenched into fists. Rumlow’s lips cured up at the corners in a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. He looked from Steve to Natasha and back again.

“Glad you got out okay. I’m goin’ down to tech, find out why the comms malfunctioned.”

Rumlow brushed hard against Steve’s shoulder as he passed him. Steve glared into the open elevator. Natasha’s touch was light against his waist, “Steve, c’mon. Fury said to go get checked.” He followed her into the elevator. “So let’s get checked.”

“I don’t need it.”

“Well then walk me down there.” Natasha announced their destination to the disembodied AI that operated the elevator access points. They rode for a moment in silence. “You know, Rogers, if I didn’t know better I’d say that sounded like a lovers quarrel.” She gave him a wry smile out of the corner of her mouth.

“Natasha, don’t.”

“Bozhe moy.” She looked at him in disbelief. “Stop elevator.”

The smooth, feminine voice rang out through the glass and steel box, “For what protocol?”

Natasha sighed. The elevator car tangibly slowed. “Protocol three-two-eight, non-emergency.” They stopped completely. The digital display read that the doors were locked, they were stopped between floors. “You and Brock Rumlow.”

“Briefly.”

“You never told me.”

“Do you share the details of your love life with me?”

“You _are_ my love life, Rogers.”

“Barton?”

“We’re on a break. Don’t change the subject.”

“I broke it off.”

Steve rubbed his hands roughly over his face and leaned back against the railing, sun-warmth just barely lingering on the glass of the outside wall of the elevator against his shoulders.

“And he didn’t take it well?”

“An understatement.”

Natasha stepped in close, tentatively put her arms around him. He relaxed into her, gripping the railing. “You shouldn’t be in the field together if there’s issues between you.”

“Yeah, well, if I requested a different team they would ask why and Brock didn’t want anyone to know.”

“Oh, Steve.”

“Don’t _oh, Steve_ me.”

They stood in silence. The elevator AI asked Natasha if she was ready to deactivate protocol. Natasha declined. It asked if they required assistance. She declined again.

“How the hell did you get mixed up with Rumlow?”

“I’ve no idea.” He pushed her away, gently. “It just… happened.” He thought fleetingly of the fact that other people may be trying to access the elevator. He decided he didn’t care.

Steve winced, mindless of his torn up scalp when he scrubbed his hands through his hair. He swore and kicked the shiny metal wall, not quite hard enough to leave a dent.

“Steve.” He pressed his forehead to the cool surface, the reflections of the lights from the city and the stars in the steadily purpling sky making his vision blur. He drew his head back and let it fall against the wall again. _Thwump._ “Steve, stop it.”

“We almost didn’t make it out of there, Natasha.”

“I know, but we did.”

“We might have be able to bring those two in alive—help them.”

“Maybe. Likely not.”

“But _maybe_. And we couldn’t. Because I fucked my teammate and he’s got a vindictive streak.”

“Steve—“

“No. I put both of us in danger and I’ve got civilian blood on my hands.”

“They stopped being civilians when they signed up for those experiments—when they attacked instead of responding to reason.”

He scoffed loudly, the sound echoing back at him with his close proximity to the wall.

“I’m a fucking idiot.”

“Hey.” Her slender fingers gripped his chin tightly and forced him to turn toward her.

“I am. Explains why Fury’s been giving me janitorial projects.”

“Stop it.” She yanked him down, making him press his forehead against hers. He dragged breath in through flared nostrils, Natasha’s fruity lotion was still very faintly coming through all of the grime and soot and char. “Stop blaming yourself for every- _fucking_ -thing. It’s getting old real quick, Rogers.”

He smashed his mouth against hers, teeth clashing together, the coppery taste of blood teasing at his tongue when the split in his bottom lip opened. Or was it Natasha’s? He didn’t really care.

“ _Steve_.”

“Tash—I—“

Her fingers curled around his ears, nails digging in and pulling him down and kissed him back. She gripped at his neck and clutched the collar of his shirt tight in her hands, pulling and dragging and making him hunch over. He drew her in, wrapping her up in his arms, nearly lifting her off the floor. He thought she was shaking against him in the circle of his embrace.

Steve realized quickly enough that it was him that was shaking, every muscle in his body held so tense and tight that he was trembling with the effort he was exerting.

She wrenched herself from his arms, looking at him hard, breathing heavily with her hands tight on his wrists. She moved back into his space, making him move back, making him press himself back into the wall. She lifted his hands, his knuckles against the metal, and put hers over them, lacing their fingers together firmly. She was an anchor, holding him in the moment instead of letting him spin out into blame and loathing.

Natasha rose up onto her toes and kissed him enthusiastically, nearly angrily, teeth and tongues clashing together hard and sharp. She kissed across his mouth and sucked the sensitive, vulnerable flesh under his chin between her teeth.

“ _Fuck._ ”

She cradled his head in her hands, rubbing her thumbs roughly across his jaw and lips. He bit down on the end of her thumb and groaned, his hands still up against the wall as if in surrender.

The AI chimed in again, asking if their non-emergency situation had been rectified. Steve’s face flushed with heat. It rolled down from his hairline and through his shoulders and chest. He lifted her at the waist and stumbled forward across the elevator car and propped her against the railing, her back to the glass, the last dregs of light in the sky burning bright around her and putting the buildings across the water into silhouette. The AI prompted them again.

Natasha tipped her head back, exposing her throat, “ _No_ , it hasn’t been rectified.” She let out a breathy moan, softening under his touch, his mouth against her skin.

Her fingers were deft with his button and zipper, hot hands shoving inside and groping at him, getting him hard, getting him _hot_.

“Goddammit, Tash.” He leaned back, arching his spine toward her and rubbing himself into her grip.

“I need you,” she breathed. He knew she didn’t. He didn’t exactly need her, either. It was comfort and a place to put their upset away…

And they should have probably waited until medical was done with them and they could go back to Steve’s apartment if they were going to do anything at all.

“Don’t talk like that.”

She gave him a steady, serious look and slipped down off the rail, “Steve, yeah.” She stroked his face and put her hands down between them again, unbuckling his belt. “Steve.” She gasped when he turned her around, both of their fingers working frantically to unfasten her belt and pants. His hands got sloppy and careless as he yanked at her clothes, his stubby nails leaving welts on her backside.

Natasha’s breath created fog against the glass when Steve ran his fingers down between her lips, a sharp exhale that made her belly jump. She swore and pushed back against him, shifting her stance to accommodate his body behind her.

She sighed, relieved and serene in stark contrast to their mutual disheveled state, as he fitted their bodies together. They fell into an easy rhythm. Natasha laid her palms to the glass, quickly cooling in the absence of sunlight, and Steve covered them with his, his palms to the backs of their hands, locking their fingers together. He curled his torso over hers, burying his face against the crook of her neck, the silky strands of her hair sticking to the tacky sweat and flakey blood on his forehead.

He looked up at her, matching her gaze in their reflections, when her back began to expand and collapse more rapidly against his chest. She shuddered and breathed out calmly, coming quietly. She twisted her neck around to catch his mouth with hers, much less urgent than before. She continued to rock back against him.

The fire was gone out of him. His anger and frustration and confusion and fear a distant nagging, tucked away to deal with later. Emotional energy completely spent, Steve found he couldn’t sustain the physical. He kept moving with her until she seemed sated, pulled out soft but not unaroused.

“How much’a that d’you think security watched?”

Natasha snorted, shoulders shaking in silent laughter. She righted her pants, staring out over the glittering city while Steve did himself back up as if they were standing in the floor-to-ceiling windows of some swanky hotel instead of the elevator of a clandestine international intelligence agency.

The AI’s voice rang out overhead, “Override protocol initiated by Deputy Director Hill. Resuming operation.”

Steve’s face flushed with color and Natasha looked at him as if daring him to make a comment. “Medical. Then you can take me home on that bike of yours. Pretend you’re a real hot-shot.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

***

“You know, if you really wanted to try out the whole dating thing—“

“Natasha, I don’t want to date you. That would just be… weird.”

She slapped him teasingly on the shoulder. “That would be disgusting.” She rolled her eyes and finished off the whiskey in her glass. “I was _going_ to say, that asking someone from SHIELD out might not be a bad idea. But, not a field agent.”

“So, do as you say, not as you do?”

“Barton and I are a special circumstance.”

“That you’re gonna tell me about some day?” He poured them each another finger of the sharp amber drink.

“Always trying to change the subject, Rogers.” She drew her feet up onto the couch cushion and scrutinized him. “I was thinking Arry.” Natasha rattled off what department she worked in. Steve squinted, rolling through the hundreds of faces he saw every day at the Triskelion in his mind. He offered a brief description of the woman he thought Natasha was talking about. “Mhm, that’s her. She’s… not very nice, actually. Kind of aloof. Sarcastic. Like someone else I know.”

“Aloof, huh?” Natasha waggled her eyebrows and nodded. “And what interest has she got in me?”

“None, really. Sort of you-adjacent. Big into history. Reads comics. I saw her knitting a scarf in the cafeteria last week.”

Steve wasn’t sure whether to find Natasha’s innuendos hilarious or insulting. They settled somewhere in the middle and he was satisfied with that.

***

Steve continued to work missions with STRIKE, sometimes the team was larger. Sometimes it just meant he and Rumlow were out in the field somewhere.

It was a little less awkward each time, a little more routine.

The official report from their botched mission said that there had been some kind of jamming device triggered when they split up. It also said that Rumlow and Rollins had waited at the rendezvous point for as long as they reasonably could for the Captain and the Widow to catch up.

Steve made peace with it as best he could.

It didn’t stop him from being surprised when Brock clapped him on the shoulder while they were suiting up. “Bygones?”

Steve smiled in disbelief and finished tying the laces of his boot. “What?”

“I can’t stand this dance we’re doin’. We were both wrong.” He shrugged and buckled his belt with purpose. “So let’s let bygones be bygones.”

Steve was determined not to let Rumlow kill the lingering buzz he felt from his run that morning, the smile Sam Wilson had left plastered on his face. “Yeah, sure.” He nodded and adopted a casual posture, elbows against his knees. “Bygones.”

Brock’s lips curled up on one side, flashing just a little bit of white tooth, a predatory smile. “Good.” He patted Steve’s shoulder. “See ya topside, big guy.”

Steve shook his head and rolled his eyes and focused on the task at hand, running through his directives for the _**Lemurian Star**_ in his head as he fastened the Kevlar vest of his suit over the mesh-paneled cover-all and wondering briefly what Natasha would have to say about the exchange.

**Author's Note:**

> Natasha picks Steve up after his run with Sam in a Corvette Stingray at the beginning of CATWS.
> 
> The failed mission is part of the Centipede project featured in season one of _Agents of SHIELD_.
> 
> And of course, the end of the story brings us up to the events of CATWS.
> 
> Do you think anyone said anything about their tryst in the lift?


End file.
